208 Spring 2012

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The death of newspapers, a reply on fat activism, the potential of outsider porn and much, much more.

Issue Contents

Regulars

Film and memory

Rjurik Davidson

Re-reading Austen

Alison Croggon

Features

Imagining women

Rebecca Giggs

The cooperation

Michael Green

Outsider porn

Matt Cornell

The name and the face

Jinghua Qian

The end of a world

Jonathan Green

Fat, privilege and resistance

Anwen Crawford

Fatal obsessions

Alex Mitchell

Fiction

Big river

Stephanie Convery

Architecture

Jennifer Mills

Blancamorphosis

Jannali Jones

Double tap

Davide Angelo

Poetry

Clockwork

Todd Turner

Honesty

Tim Thorne

Bellbird Gully

Shari Kocher

Picking Grapes

Paula Green

The Tap

Michelle Gaddes

Human Tissue

Lawrence Upton

without a city wall

Julie Maclean

Bonds

Cassandra Atherton

Australia is a film about a red dog

Campbell Thomson

Old Europe (2)

Adam Aitken

Editorial

editorial

Jeff Sparrow

Browse the issue:

Regulars

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Culture

Film and memory

Rjurik Davidson

I must have watched a great many films from childhood to my teenage years (that phase when each of us becomes aware that we have particular tastes). Like many children, I devoured whatever was put in front of me, in film as in food.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Reading

Re-reading Austen

Alison Croggon

I’m reading Jane Austen again. As a habitual re-reader to the point of vice, Austen is one of the authors to whom I have returned more often than I can count.

Features

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Imagining women

Rebecca Giggs

It would be exceptionally unusual, one imagines, for an emerging male author to be asked why so many of our best books are currently being written by men. And yet it would also be wrong to say that the query, asked of a female writer, is unforeseeable.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Politics

The cooperation

Michael Green

Ken and Ruth Covington were sacked last May, along with 144 co-workers at the Heinz factory at Girgarre in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley. It was the latest in a series of manufacturing job losses in the region, but after it happened, the Covingtons hosted two days of parties.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Outsider porn

Matt Cornell

This past spring, a trilogy of kinky romance novels penned by EL James developed into a cultural phenomenon. The Fifty Shades of Grey series first became popular as ebooks that could be quickly downloaded and read on Kindles and similar devices without arousing social embarrassment. When they finally came out in print, they sold over ten million copies in just six weeks. A Hollywood movie is already in the works.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · CAL

The name and the face

Jinghua Qian

I have the name and the face. And if it’s enough to make a stranger shout ni hao at me from across the street, then maybe it should be enough for me too. Sometimes I like a good comeback, something like ‘A-ya, dui bu qi, wo de zhong wen bu shi tai hao, xiang ni zen me cong ming de ren da gai ye hui shuo yin wen ba?’, which means ‘Oh dear, my Chinese isn’t too good, but a genius like you probably also speaks English, right?’

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

The end of a world

Jonathan Green

It’s 2025. After a decade of litigation, controversy and arrests on both sides of the Atlantic, the non-Murdoch equity holders have taken control of the News Corporation business. They have ended the Murdoch family’s gerrymander of stockholder voting rights and moved quickly to strip the newspapers from an otherwise profitable media conglomerate.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Fat, privilege and resistance

Anwen Crawford

Jennifer Lee (Overland 207) writes, ‘I expect many readers disagree with what I say about weight and fat, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong’. The implication is that she’s right, and that disagreement speaks in the voice of the oppressor. It is one of many reasons why I find Lee’s article – and identity politics more generally – to be a narrow and unhelpful frame for discussion.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Fatal obsessions

Alex Mitchell

Rupert Murdoch thrust his way into the newspaper industry in 1960 when he bought Sydney afternoon tabloid the Daily Mirror from John Fairfax & Sons. The conservative publishing aristocracy sold the Mirror (and Truth) to the 29-year-old ‘boy publisher’ for the bargain basement price of £600 000, with another £1.6 million to be paid over six years.

Fiction

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Big river

Stephanie Convery

It took a full two days for the post-cyclone rain to ease.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Architecture

Jennifer Mills

I have a layover in Shanghai for a night which I mainly spend getting on and off the metro and walking, sweating in crowds, buffeted by warm bodies.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Writing

Blancamorphosis

Jannali Jones

Jon Dootson woke up in the morning to find he’d been transformed into a long, skinny white man.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

Double tap

Davide Angelo

I was in love when New York’s disintegration splashed its light onto my face and walls.

Poetry

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Clockwork

Todd Turner

Dawn, and two stars hang beside a daylight moon. The pendulum shifts, and I can almost guess the time by the light. The potted magnolia on the

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Honesty

Tim Thorne

Sometimes the voices in your head aren’t telling you the whole truth. Sometimes even your drugs and lovers lie.

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Bellbird Gully

Shari Kocher

(after Eugene’s Falls, by A Frances Johnson) inside the invisible atlas of a wave possessor of savage kindness two-tenths of the way

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Picking Grapes

Paula Green

dawn starts up the sound of a tractor between my legs buckets

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

The Tap

Michelle Gaddes

(for Anthony) Gently turned the tap; small boy awe and glee. A withered stick man smoking in his bed,

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Human Tissue

Lawrence Upton

would as I do thought inside faces happening, not peacefully,

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

without a city wall

Julie Maclean

on the road to Ballarat the argument thick between us we take a wrong corner

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Bonds

Cassandra Atherton

You wore a white Bonds t-shirt to bed last night. A plain, white, no-nonsense Bonds t-shirt and I knew it was over. I heard the death knell. And when you asked me if I

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Australia is a film about a red dog

Campbell Thomson

‘not so much extraordinary but merely in touch with the emotional ebbs and flow of the Pilbara ... you’re left with the feeling that it’s the legend that counts, not the real thing.’ – Mark Naglazas in the West Australian

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts

Old Europe (2)

Adam Aitken

You don’t need to queue at the entrance but then so dark your captions now unreadable since the children left.

Editorial

Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 ·

editorial

Jeff Sparrow

‘The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.’ So writes George Orwell in the original preface to Animal Farm.

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